On 24 Nov 98, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> 2. It's not worthless simply because it is freely available in open
> source form. If correctly leveraged and supported, it could easily
> own the entire browser market. That's a big "if", however, and given
> AOL's wretched management record, it's very unlikely
Shaky management *and* a long track record of actively ignoring,
trivializing and/or subverting the Web in favour of their own proprietary
approach to online information distribution.
AOL *still* doesn't use HTML or other standard Web protocols to deliver
its own services, and their record once they did (very grudgingly) start
offering their millions of users limited access to the "real" net was pretty
poor too.
First they saddled them with a quirky and largely crippled "AOL browser"
that was just a bad joke (a deliberate act of sabotage if I've ever seen
one: "OK, we'll give you ingrates the Web, but it ain't gonna be pretty");
and once they decided to offer a "real" browser they signed with MS and
Explorer, which was miles behind Netscape at the time.
I suppose I'll withhold judgement on this deal until I hear more about the
nuts and bolts of it -- specifically, "Who's actually going to be running the
day-to-day browser show, Andreesen or Chase?"
If it's going to be an AOL show all the way, then this deal would be bad
news for all of us, IMO. Either way, I don't see it (as some pundits
suggest) being the silver bullet that will slay the Big Bad Microsoft Wolf.
In the worst case we'd end up with *two* ruthless, monoplistic flaunters
of Web standards controlling the browser market, rather than just one
*trying* to as we have now.
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Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Town of Almonte site: http://www.almonte.com/
Business site: http://www.federalweb.com
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